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Rate My Classmate site meant to call out group-project slackers

We rate restaurants, hotels, even professors online — so is it fair to rate classmates on how hard they worked on your group project?

Stefano Cerone has created a website where students can "rate my classmate" on how well they pull their weight in group assignments. (Richard Lautens / Toronto Star)

A York University MBA grad has launched a website where college and university students can rate their classmates — up to five stars, with room for comments — on how they perform on the pillars of group work: teamwork, competence, dependability, work ethic and communication skills.

To Stefano Cerone, 23, who has invested $12,000 to create “Tworp.com” (short for Team Work Problems), these anonymous reviews are an overdue way for serious students to avoid slackers who just piggyback on the work of others for a share of the group mark. It’s a sort of buyer-beware index he insists can serve as carrot as well as stick, by motivating students to pull their weight.

“It can be frustrating to get into groups with people you don’t really know; the last straw was one assignment where myself and one other group member had done the majority of the work and decided to ask the member who never really contributed at all to do the final 12-page edit,’ said Cerone, a business undergrad at Ryerson at the time.

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“But the night before our assignment was due he sent an email at midnight to say he couldn’t do it because he was busy — and the project was due at 8:30 a.m. I was infuriated and jumped out of bed to edit it myself.”

Had there been a classmate rating system like Tworp to check for warnings, he said, he might have avoided such a freeloader.

But to critics, this kind of public review comes close to public shaming, and runs the risk of being abused.

“What a terrible idea. Learning how to do group work is part of university and it doesn’t always go smoothly — but education is about learning from your mistakes, and there’s no room for that if you’re branded online for the rest of your career,” said Natalie Coulter, an assistant professor of communication studies at York University, whose students tackle year-long group projects in the community with real-world partners.

“We can all think of times we blew it at school, but with this kind of website, it’s permanently recorded.”

Business ethics professor Chris MacDonald of Ryerson University also worries about anonymous reviews.

“It’s sort of like putting a loaded gun in people’s hands, so you have to design it in ways that maintain reliability and responsibility. People do get tired of freeloaders, so it’s a terrific idea if you have controls so that it’s not just some sort of free-for-all.”

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There’s also the risk of pranksters “gaming the site to give misleading information,” he warned. “If it’s anonymous, you could ask your friends to all give you a good rating, or maybe you have a grudge against a classmate who turned you down for a date. Are there mechanisms in place so it’s not used to hurt people in ways they don’t deserve?”

Cerone said students must submit their first and last name and email address when posting a review on Tworp, but “anonymity on the site is important because I feel like that’s where you’ll get honesty. You likely won’t say something bad about a classmate using your real name if it could cause bad blood with someone you have to work with for the rest of the course.”

Cerone, who lives in Woodbridge, said he has to trust reviewers are actually students in the class. He reads each post to make sure it complies with the terms of use, which prohibit anything that is vulgar, sexually explicit or culturally offensive among other warnings.

Veteran education professor Carol Rolheiser, director of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation, says group projects, if well designed, can lead to richer academic solutions and help students hone the negotiating skills they’ll need in work and family life.

But designing an effective group assignment takes work, she said.

“We all remember groups that ended up being dysfunctional, where one person was a social loafer who hung onto the coattails of other people. This happens if teachers don’t create the conditions that help make it a successful experience.”

Among her tips;

Have the teacher create mixed groups so students don’t work with friends and others like themselves, which means less diversity of thought;

Suggest each member fulfills a specific role so they feel they play a part;

Have frequent check-ins with the teacher to make sure everyone is pulling their weight;

Set groups of no more than about three or four members, to allow face-to-face interaction. The larger the group, the harder to get together. “It’s like a dinner party,” said Rolheiser; “if you have eight people around the table, someone buys out.”

York University Professor James Simeon often has students in his public policy and administration program get briefings on the art of group work from York’s experiential education office before setting out on group projects in the community.

He’s leery of a classmate-rating website.

“There's a tendency for the person who has the negative experience to be the one to go online, but in the end, once it's out there, you can't get it back.”

Rating classmates on a star system also misses the back story, warned York’s Coulter.

“Some students have to work really hard for a C, but the A student might think they’re not doing anything,” she warned. “I see this all the time; one student is working their butt off at three jobs and stays up all night to do their assignments, but the A student gives them a poor rating, which means they get branded after working twice as hard.”

Stefano Cerone said he isn’t opposed to all group work. “I’ve been in groups where everyone did pull their weight, and when you saw real teamwork get better solutions,” said Cerone.

“But if you have overlapping skills or some who aren’t pulling their weight, that’s when it starts to break down.”

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